E Ink made quite an eye-catching appearance at this year’s CES – literally. The pioneering electronic paper display company debuted some of its most striking color epaper technology to date in the shape of E Ink Prism, a series of “unique and dynamic materials for architecture and design incorporating its new color changing electronic ink technology.”
This move confirms E Ink’s shift out of the dedicated ereader display space, where it has seen falling demand, and into rather more physically ambitious solutions. “E Ink Prism bridges the gap between traditional static materials and digital technology with dynamically changing materials,” the company explains. “Architects and designers can now integrate endless materials with changeable colors and patterns … E Ink Prism utilizes E Ink’s bistable ink technology in a film that can transform architectural materials into dynamic, one of a kind experiences and designs. It is visually similar to paint because it uses the same pigments found in the printing industry. But unlike traditional paint E Ink Prism can change the color of a wall, ceiling panel, or entire room instantly, at the flip of a switch.”
The solutions and samples … ahem … displayed don’t look quite ready yet to produce full-color hi-res wallscreens, let alone full-color ereader displays. But the various applications of the technology are likely to develop in parallel and feed into each other. So E Ink Prism may have brought the day of the daylight-readable full-color tablet or ereader screen just that little bit closer …
